Different game modes have been a thing for ever in DB. We have stuff like stop watch, objective mode, execution etc… And I am fine with that. People should get chances to play what they want to. But I really want to see further differentiation amongst those builds.
I understand, that the game has to be beginner friendly and easy to understand in the first place. It has to be fun for someone who jumps into the game for the first time. I got this, and SD has worked a lot in that department I think. But we need to follow this up, with even more fun, the more we play. I don´t think that´s the case right now, and I want to give an example how I would change this to the better.
First, I would love to see a beginner based tutorial build. It´s what you get to play within the first 10-15 hours of the game. Easy to understand maps are crucial and features like wall jumping should be slowly introduced. The game should be explained while people play it. I don´t think that a 10 minute long tutorial that mostly is going to be boring as well as overwhelming really helps that much. Instead give the people bits of information they can chew and apply IMMEDIATELY. It is going to be much more efficient to introduce them into the game slowly by giving them time to time to try out one by one the gunfight before they wall jump or do objectives, use certain abilities etc… This kind of build should take for as long as the average player is able to process and apply the information he gets, and finish at say level 6.
At this point, all the features in the game should be unlocked. All the walljumping, mercs and maps should be playable.
After this, I want a build that is kind of “elithish” for competitive and matchmaking. Like an elite mercenary school, where you get a small tutorial with the changes and immediately can go start with all the different changes. This changes should be only of tactical nature and by any means change up the gun fight itself. Maps should be bigger (and maybe supports various spawns, paths…) and challenging (maybe just variations of “normal” maps), with additional “harder” movement (outside of fights). Merc proficiencies should be ballanced towards a given format of players or maybe even removed in some cases. All possible element that enhances tactics and decision making should be squeezed to the maximum. Allow people who played the game for a long time to play a build that is truly worthy of all the time they have and are going to spend in the game and not the same that is made for every potential newbie.
cheers,
onYn